"Preparation to Usurp Power"
On 5 June 2026 -- 48 hours before the parliamentary vote -- the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia announced charges against Vardan Ghukasyan, twice-elected mayor of Gyumri, Armenia's second-largest...
On 5 June 2026 -- 48 hours before the parliamentary vote -- the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia announced charges against Vardan Ghukasyan, twice-elected mayor of Gyumri, Armenia's second-largest...
On 5 June 2026 the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Armenia announced arrest decisions against seven persons in the V. Brusov State University asset-stripping case. The principal names: former Education...
On 5 June 2026 -- 48 hours before the parliamentary vote -- former Yerevan mayor and former Republican Party member of parliament Gagik Beglaryan was arrested. The charges: abuse of office, and especially-large-scale...
On 4 June 2026 the Appeals Court of the Republic of Armenia replaced Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan's pre-trial custody with house arrest. In the courtroom Galstanyan -- the leader of the 18-defendant 'preparation to...
On 5 June 2026 -- 48 hours before the parliamentary vote -- the Investigative Committee entered the editorial offices of Armat Media, an opposition-aligned outlet, conducted a search, seized computers, and sealed the...
On 5 June 2026 -- 48 hours before the parliamentary vote -- Strong Armenia's campaign officials in Yerevan's Ajapnyak administrative district were arrested on vote-buying charges. Arman Sahakyan, arrested earlier the...
In the 48 hours before the 7 June parliamentary vote, the Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Armenia sent 13 criminal proceedings covering 40 persons to court on election-crime charges. The Investigative Committee...
On 3 June 2026 Aleksan ('Alik') Alexanyan -- the owner of Armat Media and, per Azatutyun.am framing, 'one of the first faces of the Strong Armenia team' -- was jailed for two months on charges of especially-large-scale...
On 5 June 2026 Republic (Hanrapetutyun) party candidate Grigor Arakelyan filed a petition with the Central Electoral Commission demanding the invalidation of the Strong Armenia (Hzor Hayastan) alliance's registration....
On 5 June 2026 -- 48 hours before the parliamentary vote -- Grigor Arakelyan, a candidate of the Republic (Hanrapetutyun) party, filed a formal petition with the Central Electoral Commission demanding that the...
The 5 June 2026 raid on Armat Media did not involve a media-regulatory action. The Pashinyan government did not suspend Armat's broadcasting licence, did not move against the outlet's web domain, did not invoke...
Among the procedural facts that senior editor Aghavni Sukiasyan placed on the record after the 5 June 2026 raid on Armat Media: NSS and Investigative Committee operatives plugged their own external storage drive into...
On 4 June 2026 the televised pre-election debate produced what multiple opposition outlets and Armat Media's editorial team characterised as a clear loss for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan -- with the Prime Minister...
Armenian voters casting ballots on 7 June 2026 will not, in the moment of the vote, know whether Strong Armenia's seats will count. The Central Electoral Commission's procedural window for ruling on the 5 June...
The number has appeared in every recent OWL coverage of the 2026 Armenian campaign: Samvel Karapetyan polls at approximately 34 percent, Pashinyan at approximately 33 percent. The polling lead is real, sustained across...
Hetq.am has profiled the wealth declarations of all 200 candidates on the Strong Armenia (Hzor Hayastan) bloc list. The number-one candidate is Narek Karapetyan -- chief executive of Tashir Capital and nephew of the...
On 27 May 2026 Samvel Karapetyan -- billionaire founder of Tashir Group, former owner of Electric Networks of Armenia, currently under house arrest in Yerevan, and leading the Civil Contract list in pre-election polling...
From house arrest in Yerevan, opposition leader Samvel Karapetyan delivered the closing-week claim of his Strong Armenia bloc on 4 June 2026. The claim is anchored on a specific number, a specific town, and a specific...
On 30 May 2026 -- Saturday, eight days before the parliamentary vote -- Bargavach Hayastan leader Gagik Tsarukyan delivered a sharpened version of his pre-election message. The quote, reported by Azatutyun.am: 'Today no...
As the Armenian state proceeds with the confiscation of his family's assets -- the 1,900-square-metre Arinj mansion already seized after the Cassation Court ruled 92 percent of its value to be of illegal origin --...
On 4 June 2026 Bargavach Hayastan -- Prosperous Armenia, the Tsarukyan-led bloc -- held its closing pre-election rally at Freedom Square in central Yerevan. The square is the venue where Nikol Pashinyan launched the...
On 27 May 2026 the Cabinet of the Republic of Armenia approved a decision allocating approximately 7 million AMD to the security and maintenance of the Arinj mansion confiscated in April from Karapet Gulonyan and Roza...
Aram Sargsyan, leader of the Republic (Hanrapetutyun) party and one of the 2026 election's opposition figures, has anchored his economic platform on two headline pledges: quintupling the state budget within five years,...
The Armenian campaign has, fairly, focused considerable attention on the wealth of Civil Contract candidates -- Vahagn Arsenyan's Bentley and Dubai apartments, Suren Papikyan's parking space, Anahit Avanesyan's Abovyan...
Three days before the parliamentary vote, Hetq.am published the wealth-declaration portrait of National-Democratic Pole party-list candidates. The bloc is led by Vahe Gasparyan and Garnik Isagulyan and contests the 7...
Hayk Konjoryan is the head of the Civil Contract parliamentary faction. He has held the position since 2021. He is running again in 2026 -- the parliamentary leader of the ruling party. His wife, Shushan Aleksanyan, has...
Anahit Avanesyan has been Armenia's Minister of Health since 11 February 2021. Her cabinet portfolio includes the entire public health system: state hospitals, the social insurance fund, the universal medical coverage...
Suren Papikyan is the sitting Minister of Defence of the Republic of Armenia. On the Civil Contract list for the 7 June 2026 parliamentary elections, he is candidate number four. The arrangement is not unique in 2026 --...
On 30 May 2026, within 24 hours of the EAEU four-leader joint statement at Astana, the Russian Federation took the next escalation step: Ambassador Sergei Kopyrkin was recalled to Moscow for consultations, and President...
At the Eurasian Economic Union summit in Astana on 29 May 2026, four EAEU heads of state -- Russia's Vladimir Putin, Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakhstan's Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Kyrgyzstan's Sadyr Japarov --...
On 29 May 2026 Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian consumer-protection agency, announced the halt of sale of approximately 64.5 million units of Jermuk mineral water, citing hydrocarbonate, chloride and sulfate content...
At the Upper Lars / Verkhny Lars border crossing -- the single physical choke point connecting Armenia's overland commerce to the Russian Federation -- Armenian truckers are now describing the cumulative effect of...
On 27 May 2026 three Russian-side commercial-pressure announcements landed within 48 hours of each other. The Hayastanyats Entrepreneurs Union confirmed approximately 100 Armenian cargo trucks have been blockaded at the...
On 4 June 2026 -- 72 hours before the Armenian parliamentary vote -- Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov delivered Russia's closing-week framing on the election. Armenia's leadership, in Peskov's words, 'has placed the...
On 22 May 2026, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan -- in the middle of an anti-Russia diplomatic season -- told reporters that the price of Russian gas supplied to Armenia "can't be raised." The quote, carried by Interfax,...
Armenia has quietly informed the Russian Federation that certain Russian election observers will not be accredited for the 7 June parliamentary vote. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed...
Pashinyan's 2025-2026 anti-Russia pivot has one headline prosecution: Samvel Karapetyan, arrested 18 June 2025, charged with calls to usurp power and money laundering, currently the leading challenger to Pashinyan in...
Nine days before Armenia's 7 June parliamentary election, a sitting United States president posted an unconditional re-election endorsement of the Armenian Prime Minister on a social network the president personally...
On 4 June 2026 -- 72 hours before the parliamentary vote -- the European Union announced a 50-million-euro support package for Armenia, framed as buffer for the cumulative Russian commercial restrictions of the past two...
On 5 June 2026 Hungary announced the suspension of work-visa issuance to Armenian citizens. The announcement was carried by Azatutyun.am the same day. The timing -- 48 hours before the Armenian parliamentary vote --...
Artur Osipyan is jailed and on hunger strike. His lawyer calls the detention unlawful. On the campaign trail, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not soften -- he doubled down, equating Osipyan with Artsakh's last...
A day after Prime Minister Pashinyan publicly declined to apologize to detained Artsakh figure Artur Osipyan -- and used the campaign-trail moment to question Osipyan's war record and demand his 'pseudo-elite' apologize...
On 27 May 2026 Hetq.am published a coalition statement from Armenian human-rights NGOs demanding the immediate release of detained opposition figure Artur Osipyan. The statement contains a formal, named accusation: the...
On 4 June 2026 -- 72 hours before the parliamentary vote -- the Ombudsman of the Republic of Armenia, Anahit Manasyan, received the Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Vassilis Maragos. Among the items on...
A Civil Contract member of parliament named Sapeyan was filmed during the 2026 campaign telling an Artsakh refugee woman: 'With that attitude, you won't live long in Armenia.' The exchange was captured on camera and...
At the Sardarapat memorial on Republic Day, 28 May 2026, Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II laid flowers, met the small number of opposition figures present, and declined to answer every question Azatutyun.am asked...
Defense lawyer. On 30 May 2026 he was physically blocked from entering the Anti-Corruption Court of the Republic of Armenia while attempting to represent opposition members who had been detained earlier that day. His...
Twice-elected mayor of Gyumri, Armenia's second-largest city. Tashir / Samvel Karapetyan opposition-network aligned. Charged on 5 June 2026 under Criminal Code Article 43-419 (preparation to usurp state power) -- 48...
Former Yerevan Kentron district head. Former mayor of Yerevan. Former Republican Party member of parliament. Known across decades of Armenian political vocabulary by the nickname 'Black Gago.' Arrested on 5 June 2026 on...
Mayor of Parakar, Armavir marz. Defeated the ruling Civil Contract party candidate in local elections. Shot dead by a masked gunman outside his home in September 2025, alongside an off-duty police officer. The detained...
On 7 June 2026, Armenia goes to the polls with a voter roll of approximately 2.6 million. The Republic of Armenia, per ArmStat census data from January 2024, has 2,318,613 resident adults aged 18 and over. The gap --...
The Central Election Commission's own oversight package, published in late May 2026 for the 03-17 May reporting window, contains the strongest single body of evidence of campaign-finance irregularity in any Armenian...
Armenia's Constitution explicitly mandates Mount Ararat with Noah's Ark on the state coat of arms. Article 202 requires a national referendum to change constitutional text. Over nine months, Pashinyan's government has...
The Armenian coat of arms on every state document, embassy, ministry letterhead and passport was designed in 1918 by architect Alexander Tamanian and painter Hakob Kojoyan for the First Republic of Armenia, and revived...
On 4 June 2026 -- 72 hours before the parliamentary vote -- Hetq.am published a paired Facebook investigation. Part one: pro-government Facebook pages posing as news outlets. Part two: pro-opposition Facebook pages...
On 30 May 2026 Hetq.am published an audit of the published electoral programmes of all 19 forces contesting the 7 June parliamentary vote. The result: 10 of the 19 either never published a programme at all, or published...
Hetq.am has produced the comprehensive accounting of Armenian 8th-convocation parliament foreign trips, August 2021 to April 2026. The total spend: 911 million dram on foreign travel by the Speaker and MPs, 2022-2025....
Confronted on the campaign trail in Spitak by a citizen who blamed him for Armenia's military losses, former President Robert Kocharyan threw the charge back with a single line: 'There were no UAVs -- no drones -- in my...
Tigranashen is a village on the main road south from Yerevan toward Vayots Dzor and Syunik -- and, on the Soviet-era administrative map, an Azerbaijani exclave (part of the Nakhichevan administrative orbit) that has...
In Alaverdi -- a high-unemployment former mining and copper-smelting town in Lori marz -- the state delivered a pension increase and introduced a new health-insurance system in the weeks immediately before the 7 June...
On 31 May 2026 the Pashinyan government will hold its second military showcase in Republic Square within a week -- the May 28 Republic Day parade under the Aragats-silhouette tribune was the first. Former President...
On 30 May 2026 the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Armenia did not, despite the scheduled session, rule on whether to revoke election-observer accreditation from Daniel Ioannisyan -- one of the country's...
Ten days before the vote, the 2026 Armenian campaign has settled into a two-way accusation war. The ruling Civil Contract brands the opposition as Russian-controlled. The opposition documents the government's abuse of...